Amazon, Flipkart roll out seller service on same day

Online marketplace portals are going all out to not only add more sellers to their platforms, but also competing aggressively with rivals in doing so. A few hours after e-commerce major Amazon India on Wednesday announced the launch of Amazon Tatkal — a studio cum registration centre on wheels, to cover various cities and add smaller merchants, rival Flipkart launched a similar service called ‘Spotlist’.

Both the services are focused on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and this move, they believe, would help them gain more sellers from smaller Tier-II and Tier-III centres. Amazon launched its pilot project in Jalandhar and Ludhiana almost a month ago and it said on Wednesday it would  be taken forward to cities, including New Delhi and Kozikode.

The firm said the Amazon Tatkal van would traverse the country, engaging with thousands of entrepreneurs, artisans, manufacturers and sellers and help them sell online on the spot.

“Amazon Tatkal is a vehicle which will help register sellers with us in 60 minutes. Any seller can walk in to get their products photographed and catalogued. It is a specially designed studio-on-wheels, offering a suite of services, as well as basic seller training mechanisms. For now, we will not charge anything to the sellers for the service,” Amazon India Director and General Manager (Seller Services) Gopal Pillai said. Meanwhile, Flipkart on Wednesday evening launched ‘Spotlist’, a cataloguing and listing service targeted at SMEs, artisans and other businesses across the country.

“It will give instant access to list their products on Flipkart in a timely and professional manner. Spotlist enables sellers to avail these processes conveniently on their premises. It aims to provide sellers with infrastructure and training that are vital to improving their visibility and competitiveness on Flipkart’s e-commerce platform. Spotlist enables sellers to catalogue their selection in the shortest possible time,” it said.

It said since November last year, this initiative had been launched in five metros - Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, and Hyderabad. Over 1,000 sellers across categories have availed this service, and close to 10,000 products have been catalogued.

In addition to enabling sellers irrespective of size and selection, Spotlist extends the benefits to other functions within the e-commerce ecosystem. For instance, freelance wedding and party photographers may register with Flipkart as cataloguing partners and open a new revenue stream for themselves.

While Flipkart currently has over a 100,000 sellers on its platform, Amazon has around 65,000 Indian sellers on its portal and globally, it has around two million active sellers.